


All things considered

by jasminemai



Series: all things considered [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 03:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15186221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasminemai/pseuds/jasminemai
Summary: All things considered, she doesn't think she's totally failed at baking.Or, a peak into the 4th of July celebrations for the Queen family.





	All things considered

**Author's Note:**

> This started from a spiral and was meant to be teary eyed fluff and somehow ended at 3500 words and I honestly don't know how that happened but here we are.

All things considered, she doesn’t think she’s totally failed at baking. She hadn’t tried anything overly ambitious like the soufflés Oliver had once spoiled her with back when they were living in Ivy Town. But she doesn’t want to think about Ivy Town, or about Oliver or about the almost proposal. Mostly because even thinking of her husband sitting in prison for _their_ crimes makes her feel like throwing up.

Of course the more simplistic explanation of her nausea could be because of her second trimester morning sickness which has only gotten worse since the move to their new and hopefully final town of the summer. But she also doesn’t want to think about that because it’s been almost four months without her husband and at the rate the justice system is going he won’t be out before the baby is born.

Not that she was expecting him to get out of course, not with a life sentence he willingly signed for himself. But there had been that glimmer of hope because between her, Oliver and Digg, they’ve survived Malcom Merlyn three separate times (to be honest, she’d stopped counting once Oliver had told her he’d handed the position of Ra’s over to Merlyn. And don’t even get her started on that decision he made without consulting anyone.), they defeated Ra’s Al Ghul and Damien Darhk, they somehow managed to survive Prometheus so they could survive _The Dragon_.

(What type of name was _The Dragon_ anyway? It didn’t instil fear like Ra’s or Darhk? And right now she wasn’t scared of him, she just wanted him in custody or dead.)

But the point was: she didn’t suck at baking. At least when it came to baking cookies. Cookies were easy and between a genius and her protégé they probably weren’t going to burn the house down making cookies for the 4th.

Probably being a relative point here because she’d somehow fallen asleep in the warm Ohio sun from her position in the reclining chair she’d begged Roy to move outside for her.

“Blondie you do realise that I didn’t come back from treasure hunting with Thea and Nyssa to _move you’re furniture,_ right?” He’d asked as she pulled away from the hug she’d given the moment she’d seen his beat up truck pull into the driveway. Which was followed fairly quickly by. “Are you having a baby?”

She’d slugged his arm fairly hard at that, but had quickly broken into tears at his words. She blames hormones and her total lack of sleep for that, by the way. Roy had done everything she’d asked of him for the next three days while they worked to turn the basement into a mini bunker and the office upstairs into his bedroom.

And she’d gotten her favourite recliner out on the porch. That had been the most important thing.

_Anyway._

She had planned to decorate the cookies with stars and stripes, patriotism and all but half way through she and Will had realised that the icing made a super pretty purple and pink and that considering she was due to give birth in four months, she should probably tell the rest of the team.

Since the three moves back in May, her contact with the team had been limited at best. She barely spoke to Diggle unless it was through Lyla and even then their relationship had suffered more than most in the wake of Oliver’s decision to go to prison. She made enough contact to send Curtis the designs and software systems she’d created for their company which was finally making a profit after breaking even a month ago.

But she wasn’t involved with the team, if there even was a team anymore. She had other things to focus on. Like her stepson and growing baby. And the former hoodlum that had come calling the moment she’d been able to get in contact with Nyssa (she can’t help but find it ironic that she has more ways of contacting her husband’s ex-wife than she does her own sister-in-law). So the team had no knowledge of her bun in the oven situation and she knew she had to keep it that way. But Roy was dead still. At his request. Watson had offered to exonerate Roy and bring him back from the dead but he’d refused so that he could continue travelling with Thea without drawing attention to himself.

Weird team dynamics aside, her 4th of July cookies turned into pregnancy announcement cookies that were being sent off to Star City using private ARGUS delivery systems.

“So what are we taking to the neighbourhood barbeque?” Will had asked as they watched the ARGUS agent load the cookies into his truck. “Because neither of us can cook anything but cookies and frozen meals.” Although even that was an effort and a half since food liked to explode whenever she cooked it. The pasta stains on her roof said it all really.

“Make Roy cook something.” Not that Roy can cook, hence why she’d meant to get in contact with Thea. Thea could at least boil a pot of water without setting fire to something.

“I’m not here to cook,” Roy protested from his spot in the living room.

Not for the first time she wonders why she ever thought having William, an almost thirteen year old, and Roy, essentially still a child, living under the same roof would be a good idea.

“We could just stay in,” Will suggests. “I mean I don’t even really like fireworks anymore, and we don’t like anyone here anyway so it’s not like they’ll be upset if we just don’t show up.”

“We’re meant to acclimatise Will, you know that,” she replies although she knows he’s got a point. The first thing Lyla had told her was that she needed to blend into the community. Especially since she wasn’t old enough to have a 13 year old son. But with everything the three of them have been through, the idea of celebrating _today_ with fireworks seems like the worst possible idea. Especially since the housewives really just glared at her and muttered about having children out of wedlock. “But I did say we could finish watching Doctor Who before you go to space camp.”

She doesn’t miss the way the tension immediately fades from Will’s shoulders as she settles down in her second favourite recliner, or the way Roy smiles at her gratefully when Will isn’t looking. She also doesn’t miss the way her left hand suddenly doesn’t feel as heavy as it had moments ago. She isn’t sure why, of all things, that weight has lifted but regardless she’s grateful that it has.

The boys set up the TV and Roy even grabs her a bottle of kombucha the size of her head as well as a packet of Pringles and her strange little family settles in for a night of Doctor Who marathon.

**

“Dad’s kind of like the Doctor, isn’t he?” Will asks her softly, a step ahead of her as they climb up to their rooms. “He’s selfless most of the time but he can be selfish occasionally.”

“You’re not wrong,” she tells him softly, pushing the door to his bedroom open. “I’ve always thought of your dad as a hero, even when he makes stupid decisions. But I’ve never thought of him as the Doctor.”

“I think it kind of fits.” Will admits. “The Doctor isn’t perfect, but he’s good and he always has the best intentions. He makes the decisions that no one else should have to because he thinks that his responsibility and no one else’s.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she admits.

William pauses as he grabs his pyjamas from underneath his pillow. “Would you be mad at me if I wasn’t mad at him anymore? At least not totally made at him?”

“Of course not! My feelings towards your father should have no impact on you.”

“But it does,” Will protests. “Because you’re the only family I have and your opinion matters to me. I don’t want to think that I’m choosing a side.”

“There’s no sides in this situation Will. We’re a team, you, me and your dad. Even if your father isn’t in a position to be making team friendly choices right now. That won’t ever change. If anything I’m so proud that you’re acknowledging you’re feelings about the situation. That’s something that you’re dad and I still struggle with.”

She pulls him into a one armed hug. “Thanks Felicity.”

“You should write a letter to your dad,” she suggests slowly. She knew from Diggle that Oliver had no phone privileges because he kept getting into fights, but that he was still allowed to receive mail.

William nods eagerly. “Really? He’d be able to get a letter from us?”

“Well, I’m not totally sure, but what’s the harm in trying?”

“How should I write it?”

She frowns in confusion.

“Like, essay style of like, a story? How do you write letters?”

“You’ve never written a letter before?”

“Well I’ve written an email.”

“Look,” she begins although she’s unsure where her current stream of thought is going to lead her. “It doesn’t matter how you write your letter. Start off with jokes, or say I love you. It’s not being graded and we both know that your dad won’t care how you write it.”

“Can we post it tomorrow?” He asks. “And can I borrow that nice pen and paper set you have for when you do Helix stuff?” Will turns to inspect his room. “Can I borrow the polaroid camera? I won’t take any pictures of anything that could give our location away, I just wanna show dad the picture wall we put up! And maybe like you’re favourite rocking chair. And we could also include a picture of the two of us!”

“I think that sounds like a wonderful idea.”

Will starts bustling around his bedroom, cataloguing all the different things he wants to take pictures of as she heads into the study to collect the supplies she requested.

“You gonna write a letter as well?” Roy asks, startling her out of her jumbled thoughts. “I mean you might as well, considering the kid is writing one and you can just send them together.”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” she lies, causing Roy to raise an eyebrow at her speculatively. He can see right through her these days. The truth was, she _had_ thought about writing Oliver a letter. She thought about it more often than she’d like to admit to anyone. In one letter she’d very nearly written that she wanted a divorce. In another she begged him to come home. She had so much to say to him. But none of her anger or desperation or fear or loss or pain could be expressed solely through words. Not when so much of their relationship was defined by the small moments in the bunker or the foundry, not big speeches and declarations of love, or fights in alley ways while the base from the club grumbled beneath them.

“I don’t think what I have to say is going to help anyone right now,” she admits finally. “Anything I write is going to be a lie because I don’t know how I feel. But this is something that Will needs to do. His relationship with Oliver is more important than-”

“You’re marriage? That’s a little harsh don’t you think.”

“I don’t want a divorce Roy, settle down.”

“So what do you want? Because we haven’t addressed that fact the elephant to be in the room.”

“That better not have been an illusion to my baby bump Roy Harper.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Sorry. But it’s true. I know you just sent ‘hi I’m pregnant cookies to the rest of the team but don’t you think Oliver deserves something that isn’t cookies to tell him you’re pregnant with his spawn.”

She throws a pillow at him. “You’re right.”

“Can I get that recorded please?”

“But I just think that literally anything that I say to him in a letter or on a phone call would just be rubbing it in his face.”

“So?”

“So, his biggest regret with William is that he didn’t get to be a part of his life when he was growing up.”

“And how is what you’re doing any different.”

“He chose this!” She exclaims. “He chose to hand himself over to Watson. He chose to spend the rest of his life in prison. He made that choice without consulting me or Digg or anyone. Things got tough and he was put in a position where he had to leave me out of the decision making process.”

“He was protecting you, and William and the rest of the team. That doesn’t mean he loses the right to know about his kid. That doesn’t give you the right to hide his kid away from him.”

“I’m in protective custody _because_ of what Oliver wanted Roy,” she slumps onto the couch her head resting in her hands. “And you can’t honestly tell me that if Oliver knew I was pregnant before he outed himself he would have made any other decision.”

They both know she’s not wrong. If anything, a pregnancy thrown into the chaos of the situation would have landed her in ARGUS protective custody straight away. She’s almost glad that the stress of last few months meant that she wasn’t as on the ball as she would have been otherwise. Not that she doesn’t already love the tiny human growing inside of her, but if she’d had it her way, a pregnancy announcement would be going out when her whole family was together and whole again.

“Maybe you should write that down then?” Roy suggests softly, sitting beside her on the couch. “Say that you don’t want to talk about all your problems right now, but you do want to talk about them at some stage. Don’t shut him out because you’re afraid of getting hurt, Felicity. You’ll only hurt yourself more.”

She wants to protest. She wants to yell that she shouldn’t have to be the one that makes the effort when he shut her out in the first place. But none of this is fair. And Roy’s right in a way. Not that she’s readily going to admit that, of course.

“I need to tell him.”

**

The letters came three days apart.

He knew he was lucky to get them at all given that he’d spent the better part of his time in prison in solitary confinement, partly because he kept picking fights and winning them and partly for his own protection.

The first was William’s. He could tell immediately from the neat handwriting that it was his son. Felicity’s handwriting had always been more like her thoughts, not sloppy or messy, just written as fast as her hands could keep up with her train of thought.

He hadn’t opened it at first. He knew that the moment he did the longing for his family would overwhelm him and then he’d likely end up losing the next fight he got into. So Oliver tucked the letter into his pocket, letting it add an unexpected weight to his movements, and continued on with workout routine, as limited as it was, from the confines of his cell.

When the nicer one of his three or so guards handed him another letter.

This one is from Felicity. It’s smaller than William’s, lighter too. A part of him is relieved that it’s not heavy, having feared that one day he’d receive divorce papers so that she could begin a new life without him, free of the burden he had placed on her shoulders by going to prison.

He tucks this one into his pocket for safe keeping as well. He can heavy footfalls of an inmate approaching his cell and he braces for the fight that he knows is coming.

**

He wakes up in solitary sprawled across the floor where the guards no doubt tossed him when he’d been rendered unconscious in the fight. Both letters are still in his pockets and he knows that since no one knows he’s awake, this may be the only time he has left to read them.

He opens William’s first, carefully unpeeling the lip of the envelope and sliding out a piece of paper out. He realises quickly that William’s written him what looks like an essay.

_Dad._

_Felicity told me that I didn’t have to have any structure for my letter to you, just that I should write what feels right. So here goes, I guess._

_I’m writing this at 10pm, July 4 th. I’m meant to be going to bed but Felicity said I can take as long as I want writing to you so that we can post my letter in the morning. I feel like I have so much to tell you but I don’t know where to start. So I guess from the beginning. Kind of. _

_Tonight, instead of going to the community picnic in the neighbourhood, we stayed home and watched Doctor Who. It’s really good and it’s perfect to binge watch, even if Felicity always falls asleep and I have to wake her up._

_Anyway. We got to this episode and the Doctor said that he doesn’t think of himself a hero because he has blood on his hands but that doesn’t stop him from trying to always do the right thing. And that reminded me a lot of you and the decision you’ve made for our family._

_I hated you a lot when we first had to move away. I hated that Felicity had to be stuck with me because you were in jail and I hated that she was sad and I hated you for causing all of it. I guess I didn’t really stop to think about how hard that decision must have been for you._

_I’m not saying I forgive you, or that I’m not still mad at you, because I don’t and I am. But I understand it sort of._

_I also just wanted to say that even though I’m still mad at you, I miss you and I love you and I sent you a bunch of pictures of our new house and some other cool things._

_From, William._

  1. _I’m going to space camp next month and I don’t know who’s more excited, me or Felicity._



_PPS. I think you’re going to need to buy lots of expensive gifts for both of us when you get out._

Oliver shakes the envelop and sure enough a Polaroids fall out, bound together by a ribbon. On the back of each of the pictures is a short description.

There’s one of William’s bedroom, of the wall that he and Felicity had decorated filled with pictures of space, there’s one of a kitchen simply captioned ‘the disaster zone’. All up there’s almost ten pictures of his sons new life. But it’s not until he gets to the last picture that his breath catches in his throat and he lets himself really _miss_ William and Felicity for the first time.

There’s nothing overwhelmingly special about the picture. It’s just the two of them standing on a porch, Felicity’s arm draped around William’s shoulder as he holds the camera in his hands. They’re mid laugh and the picture is sort of blurry but it’s the most perfect picture Oliver’s seen.

He folds up the letter with the other pictures and tucks it under his mattress, and tucks the photo of Felicity and William back into his pocket.

He opens Felicity’s letter next, although it’s not really a letter, simply two pictures. It’s a sonogram with a circle around a baby, labelled baby Queen and with a due date sometime in December. It’s like his whole world freezes for a moment and he’s not in Slabside anymore. He’s in a doctor’s office looking at a monitor, he’s holding Felicity’s hair back as she empties the contents of her stomach into the toilet.

He turns over the second picture expecting another sonogram but this one is a Polaroid as well. It’s of Felicity sprawled out on a recliner in the sun, a simple sun dress doing absolutely nothing to hide her bump. His heart aches at the way the sun catches her hair, or the way her grin lights up her entire face as she poked her tongue out at whoever is taking the picture.

He’s missed them both before. How could he not have; he’d spent more time pushing the away in an effort to protect them than he had keeping them close by.

His heart had ached when he’d watched Felicity walk away from him in Nanda Parbat and again when she called off their engagement. He’d spent hours down in the bunker punching the training dummy’s after he’d sent William away.

But this was different. Instead of feeling resigned to his fate like he had the last time, he felt energised, like he’d fight till his last breath to get back to his family. A family that would soon include a baby, if the sonogram was any indication.  

He flipped over the Polaroid again, noticing the caption for the first time.

_We love you and we miss you. – FQ_

For the first time in four months, Oliver had no intention of serving his life sentence.


End file.
